A commentary on THE DIAMOND SŪTRA: How to realize Enlightenment Here & Now through an active experience of Life

By Zen Master Engaku Taino and Zen Master Reiyo Ekai

How to realize Enlightenment Here & Now through anactive experience of Life?The Diamond Sutra bothcommented upon and noted in this book, as well asexplained with operative chapters, provides answers in apractical, usable way to this deep, intimate question.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fontana Editore
• Release date: Aug 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9788898750399

Book preview

A commentary on

THE DIAMOND SŪTRA

How to realize Enlightenment Here & Now through an active experience of Life

Zen Master Engaku Taino

Zen Master Reiyo Ekai

Where the real Diamond

Comes from

Foreword by Zen Master Leonardo Anfolsi Reiyo

Practitioners commonly have kensho experiences, momentary glimpses of completeness, and from these, they go to a Master to ask for sincere advice. The typical question is: How I could replicate these experiences and keep it within myself forever?

The Diamond Sutra is all about this and is a treasure trove of methods and experiences, only if we succeed in understanding and using it. Otherwise we could just read it and have blissful and calm experiences with a good accumulation of merits, but we are not sure that we abide in the real, pristine state of enlightenment. If you start to practice and realize your meditation you can utilize it in every moment of your life. For this reason, the commentary may appear to be very simple but it goes on the spot and the next chapter - Realizing a Path through the Diamond Sutra – explains how to use the two different translations.

The chapter after contains effective techniques that can provide us with real experiences. For centuries, this Sutra has been considered a shortcut to understand what the Mind of the Buddha, the Enlightened Mind of all the Enlightened Ones is. I pay my respects to this ancient and blissful text, considered to be the first printed book of humankind made with woodblocks and I am happy to share this beauty with everyone who is a true seeker. A thinking man always tries to focus on finding answers to his main questions, figuring out all those pieces made from underlying meanings, significance and mental images. Rarely bare insights and direct perceptions are part of this quest, but being that this theme is - for all religions - the Core of all Themes, we should pay attention to the tools and the kind of attention that we commonly use and that, in this case, might not work. Even from the monotheistic point of view, long before accepting any scriptures, dogmas or ethics, a follower should at least understand some of the ancient rites and prayers or what a priest says to him now. So, for this very reason, the Enlightened Mind – the mind that truly can understand eternity and therefore religion and words - is at the base of every philosophy, religion or point of view in the world, even if we call this Mind by other terms like Holy Ghost or the Uncreated Aspect of the Soul[1], Taichi or Wuwei, Buddhi and Mukti or Kaivalya, Ma’rifa or Mushahada, Sekhel Meir or collective unconscious.[2]

The Diamond Sutra presents us with not just some mere answers about this difficult theme, but pretends to show us the simplest way to orient our attention and open our mind to a more vast and personal insight about this mystery. In other words, this Sutra with all his paradoxes permits and encourages us to understand the matter by ourselves, going more deeply inside or even beyond whatever has been written and stated before. I could use as an example a perfectly closed box that contains some kind of supreme wisdom. Somebody tries to understand the content in a deductive way looking at the sender, at the recipient, and at the quality of the wrap, et cetera. Buddha, in this sutra, takes out a drill and makes holes in the box and reminds you that you already have a light in your hand with which you could easily look inside the box through the holes, having deep insights about the real content. Of course, this is an example but sometimes we actually need to forget our tools and reach for some new insights, something more interesting than points of view, or certainties. Being that a supreme wisdom is recognized everywhere through the naked experience of our perception, no more drills or lights are needed after we find the intensity of this direct inquiry. For this reason, because of this personal discovery, this scripture could be useful for people of every religion. Since my youth, I have enjoyed the strength and the beauty that is inside all the religions and the philosophies of east and west, and then I found, in the Diamond and the Heart Sutras, the deepest shift in what-we-can-do-to-finally-understand. These sutras contain not a revelation but a return of the naked memory of being, something we can relate to as our religion says or permits us to say. Dr. Paul Harrison[3] of Stanford University says that this sutra Deconstructs the normal categories of our experience, with which we can agree. This ancient text is full of paradoxes and every one of them brings a silent, extreme insight, an unexpected jump beyond plain logic, beyond all the reference categories, functioning as a skillful means to give the proper approach to the new information. In this way, the insight appears valuable, void and suspended in a state of unexpected bliss. Every time this emotional insight is stated, lost and found again, even with many repetitions. For example, an incredible amount of merits that come from reading and explaining the Sutra is emphasized, but from the point of view of the inevitable, inherent paradox contained in this text, the Sutra states that they are at the same time non-merits being that they are void; but for this reason we can, in some ways, call them merits, being made real by the same fact/experience of being void. The Diamond Sutra explains the void power of the blessing that emanates from the immediate merit/fact of understanding, reciting and teaching even four lines of the text. In this way, the Sutra emphasizes, for the next centuries, its real meaning and function, being not a mere exercise book of hyper-logic, but a real meditative practice, a sharing of active knowledge that changes the lives of people. The Diamond Sutra has always been regarded as a deep, meaningful emanation of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, and is often considered as a broader philosophical introduction to the short and punchy Heart Sutra, which is the most recited Sutra in Buddhist monasteries and temples around the world. It has even been quoted in the famous movie The Little Buddha by Bernardo Bertolucci, and was cited a century ago in the Good Soldier Swejk by Jaroslav Hasek. While the Heart Sutra’s content is even more cathartic and paradoxical, the Diamond Sutra broadens the same themes, and although it remains a short Sutra, provides an opportunity for a philosophical understanding of different points; an analysis, nonetheless, focusing on the awakening of the lecturer and, thus, introducing an appropriate, seductive method to realize it. For this reason, the Diamond Sutra has been very appreciated by Jack Kerouac, who wrote a sutra in gratitude as an answer, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity.

This Sutra has been commented upon by the most celebrated, ancient Buddhist philosophers such as Asanga, Vasubandhu, and Kamalasila. We have several translations of this Sutra, from Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese sources. Today for translators, it is unavoidable to consider all the best translations available in the different languages even if, as it is in this case, we are rooted in the most ancient and reliable Sanskrit sources. About China and Ch’an, Kumarajiva is the most famous translator of Sanskrit into Chinese and lived between the fourth and fifth centuries. While imprisoned in China for several years due to a political change, he learned Chinese perfectly. Finally, Nirvana no longer was translated as Wuwei (non-action) and the void[4] was no more translated as Wu (negation), but both the terms were translated more precisely by Kumarajiva. He understood the etymology of many simple and colloquial terms of the Chinese languages and their broader meaning. So these replaced those concepts already in use in Confucian and Taoist religions and provided deeper insights on the words of Buddha. So, after a first semantic fraternization with the other religions of China, Buddhism began to stand out, thanks to the work of Kumarajiva.[5]

The drafting of a Buddhist Canon in Chinese created a very significant response and variations from the different Buddhist schools and the composition of the commentaries that followed, completed a vertigo of religious contributions that were capable of interacting with the Chinese civilization for centuries to come and continues even today. In fact, the Buddhist Canon in the Chinese language contains the so-called Sutra of Hui Neng, or Platform Sutra, which is a classic of Chan Buddhism/Zen originally written in Chinese. The Diamond Sutra is a compact Sutra, and the commentary of the Master Taino is short and concise and does not address philosophy or theory, as similar to the practice of koan where things are seen and considered in a straight way. The approach of all the methods of this school is experiential, not only paradoxical, but goes to the heart of the issues in a simple, basic, and easy to understand way by all, with examples related to everyday life, concerning the victories, the frustrations and the hopes experienced by all humanity, which is the playground where enlightenment has to be realized. A